Macbook: Air vs. Pro vs. Retina.

Hello fellow proud Apple fans/users/consumers/customers/admirers etc.

To elongate a short question long -

I recently dropped my second hand (don't know how many hands it changed but it is/was the first ever Apple notebook I bought and got it from a very dodgy African guy) Macbook Pro 2006. I was pulling a chair with the chord wrapped around it and the magsafe, on this occasion , did not disconnect and *THUD* it took the Pro down, on to the bare wooden ground, and a massive dent appeared . Since then it sounded clunky and eventually stopped responding which concluded in the HDD giving up and is now RIP. It had been previously upgraded and lasted me 2 years. I've bought a new one and will be selling it on to partially fund my first new Apple notebook...

So, now that I want to invest in a notebook. I'm definitely going to have it future-proof. Whatever it'll be, it'll be 8GB RAM definitely and will have SSD. I don't mind the SSD being relatively small as I have a 1TB portable drive to go with it for movies, music, edited photos and videos.
I will also in the near future get a very high spec Mac Mini too (really underrated little genius machines) to be my main computer, but for now...

The warfare going in my head is (after chatting to an Apple CS rep on IM online who told me it isn't worth getting the Retina right now), which notebook to get.

My usage (Most of these apps will be open at once):
-Browser with multiple (10+) tabs open ranging from YouTube to Tumblr
-Music client (i.e. iTunes or Spotify) open
-Word and/or Excel open
-Downloading client open
-Photoshop open and Adobe Audition (might not be open at the same time)
-Possibly VLC
-FaceTime/Skyping
-.pdf files open


My requirements:
-Light gaming
-Photo editing
-Video editing (Final cut)
-Music
-Watching HD movies and videos (playback wise)
-Watching stuff off of websites like TV project etc
-Portability as I'll be carrying it around alot and investing in the appropriate gear/kit for it.
-DJ software editing
-Skyping

As you can see I have lots of things going at once. Is it possible you could help me with your wisdom?

I've been considering Air 1.8Ghz 256GB 8GB RAM or a Pro but with 128GB SSD?

SSD and 8GB Ram have to be bare minimum...

hkim1983 said:

This depends on how "serious" you are with the photo and video editing. I don't know anything about dj software, so I won't comment on that.

Otherwise, an Air can do all of that. If your mini is going to be your main machine though, you can offset all of the heavy work onto that and just use the air for everything else.

I personally don't believe in "future-proofing" computers, since you tend to experience serious diminishing returns around the 4-5 year mark unless you are the most basic of users (components also tend to start breaking down around that time frame). I think it's better to spend less and just replace every 2-3 years instead, this way, you'll always be happy with performance and your productivity isn't compromised.

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I'm thinking about investing but reselling. Most well specced out Macs have a good resell value. Reselling every 2-3 years.

designs216 said:

Get the 13" Air and max it out. You may well find you can skip the Mini.

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That's for having a good dock station to work with at home and not use of the battery cycles for the reselling of the Air. (That's if I'm definitely persuaded to buy one)